Six prominent figures were convicted yesterday of secretly transferring money to North Korea ahead of a historic 2000 summit, the first to be punished in a scandal that has tarnished the image of a Nobel Peace prize-winning former president.
The six men, including two key figures in the administration of former president Kim Dae-jung, were given suspended prison terms immediately after the conviction by the Seoul District Criminal Court.
The ruling means that the officials will not likely serve their sentences unless they are convicted of the same crime again. It is not clear if they will appeal.
The court found them guilty of secretly remitting US$100 million in violation of South Korea's strict foreign currency regulations.
The case has severely damaged the reputation of Kim after an independent counsel concluded that his government funneled the money to North Korea in exchange for hosting the 2000 summit with the communist country's leader Kim Jong-il.
The summit led to the dramatic easing of tensions on the Korean Peninsula and as a result Kim won the Nobel Peace Prize that year.
Kim, who was never investigated or indicted, finished his five-year term in February. He was succeeded by President Roh Moo-hyun, a political ally.
"The secret remittance to North Korea obviously has a close relationship with the inter-Korean summit talks," a court verdict said. "However, all illegalities committed in the procedure of money transmission are subject to criminal punishment."
The court sentenced Lee Ki-ho, a presidential economic adviser under the Kim government, to a three-year suspended term. Lim Dong-won, a former intelligence chief under Kim, received a suspended 18-month term.
The court found the two guilty of helping business conglomerate Hyundai take out loans from a state bank and remit the money to North Korea through secret channels.
Kim Yoon-kyu, president of Hyundai Asan Corp, a Hyundai subsidiary which controls all Hyundai business in North Korea, got a suspended one-year sentence. Others convicted are Choi Kyu-baek, a former senior intelligence official, and two former top officials of the state-run Korea Development Bank -- Lee Keun-young and Park Sang-bae.
Before stepping down as president in February, Kim publicly admitted that his government had helped the Hyundai group give North Korea US$500 million days before the summit.
Kim claimed that the money was Hyundai's payment for its business in North Korea, including tourism, cross-border railways and an industrial park to be built exclusively for labor-intensive South Korean plants.
But he admitted that the money included US$100 million his government had promised to give the impoverished North in connection with the summit.
Most of Hyundai's payment was covered with loans from the Korea Development Bank.
The chief of Hyundai-Asan, Chung Mong-hun, committed suicide on Aug. 4 while facing corruption charges in connection with the payoff. He was indicted on charges of doctoring company books to hide the money transfers and accused of embezzling company money to pay bribes.
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